Book Notes: Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker

• Managing oneself demands that you think and behave like a chief executive officer.
• We need to know our strengths in order to know where we belong and the only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis.

— Easy way to practice feedback analysis: When taking a key decision/action,

Write down your expectation of the outcome. Compare actual outcome with expectation. Repeat.

— Feedback analysis helps understand strengths (and improve them), if practiced consistently.

• Taking pride in ignorance is self-defeating.

— Developing occupation-specific proficiency is not enough.

— Develop skills/knowledge to realise the strengths found through feedback analysis.

• Being bright is not a substitute for knowledge.

— Actually doing work/implementing knowledge trumps just having ideas.

Going from mediocre to first rate is easier than going from beginner to mediocre.

— People should not waste time on Low competencies i.e. competencies at which it is difficult to become mediocre

• It is extremely important to assess yourself and the kind of personal preferences you have:

— Are you more of a Reader/Listener?

— Do you work better in collaboration or alone? If in collaboration, what relationship do you work best in?

— Do you perform better in structured/unstructured environment?

— Are you better suited for bigger organizations/smaller setups?

— What are your values? Are they in alignment with where you work?

— Where do you belong?

— What can you contribute?

Take responsibility for relationships! Failure to ask reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history.

— Accept that other people are as much individuals as you yourself are.

— Taking responsibility for communication.

• Excelling in the second half of life:

When work for most people meant manual labor, there was no need to worry about the second half of your life

— Find a second area — whether in a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture that offers an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success.